Google Apps is one of the favorite tools used by the enterprise. After all, there are more than 5 million users using it — it’s definitely useful for smaller businesses that want enterprise services either on a budget or with flexibility. As every company knows, the cloud is not faultless and it is sensible to employ a backup option in case of an outage or glitch.

Take the recent outages with Google earlier this week. Imagine if that was for a prolonged period of time. And what if the rules of the game changed, like with Google announcing that it was ceasing to offer its Google Apps service for free in place of a “paid for experience”. Protecting and backing up data is extremely critical.

One of the backup options out there, Spanning Cloud Apps, released an update giving more controls in how data is archived and stored. Today, Backupify has a number of updates to help improve the backup and storage process for businesses operating in the cloud.

Called Backupify’s “Winter Release 2012″, the company says that the intent is to meet the needs of large organizations who use Google Apps, but also have “more complex internal structures, legal requirements, and subdomains.” What users will find is that the service now comes with additional administrative controls, along with a centralized interface to help manage all critical data that’s stored in the cloud.

Some of the features that its 5,000 customers will find in the update include:

Multiple administrator management: Grants enterprise companies the ability to create multiple admin accounts across various departments, locations, and business lines. It gives them the rights to add new users or begin a restore function or export data on behalf of another user.

Audit logs: Being able to monitor what’s going on with the data and what’s being backed up is really important for any administrator. Backupify now provides comprehensive audit logs that includes action type, descriptions, username, IP address, and timestamp.

Subdomain management: No longer will enterprise companies need to be restricted to backing up data from just one domain. Now, if there are multiple Google Apps subdomains, it can be stored within one Backupify account.

According to Rob May, Backupify’s CEO, companies are taking notice when it comes to backing up data:

Larger organizations like the Museum of Modern Art, the Financial Times, Jawbone, Park Hotels and Auberge Resorts, and leading academic institutions like Berklee College of Music and Rice University trust Backupify to safeguard their Google Apps data. As we work with these organizations to ensure they always have a secure second copy of their data, we’ve developed better tools that give more control to the administrator while managing multiple sets of daily backups.

Founded in 2008, Backupify has hit some major milestones this year. It has signed up its one-millionth account and there are over 700 million items being stored for safekeeping on Backupify’s servers.

Companies who are interested in Backupify will find that its pricing structure is broken up into two plans: Enterprise and Enterprise Plus. With the former, the cost is $4 per user and requires a minimum of 25 users with unlimited storage. In the latter plan, companies are allowed unlimited users with up to 1 TB of data for $990 per month and has the ability to purchase more storage as needed. Another option, the Professional plan, costs $3 per user with a minimum of 1 user and up to 35 GB of storage per user.

For those wanting to gently dip their toes, Backupify offers a free trial.